


The Living Dead

by willowsandwonders



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Depression, F/F, GAME OVER Timeline (Homestuck), Meteorstuck, References to Canonical Character Death, a Kanaya Maryam special, and additional warnings in the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26916445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowsandwonders/pseuds/willowsandwonders
Summary: Dying is the greatest catharsis you’ve felt in sweeps. You’re not sure how you feel about that.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	The Living Dead

**Author's Note:**

> hey! as the tags said, I cannot stress enough that this takes place in the game over timeline and as such mentions and deals with things like underage & unhealthy drinking, unhealthy relationships, mental health issues, and some character death at the end--this is not a happy story, please tread carefully!

It’s been three perigees since Kanaya Maryam died. Things have quieted down considerably on the meteor since then, but...you’re still trying to figure out what kind of troll replaced her. You don’t...you don’t  _ feel  _ that different. Other than the drinking blood, and the glowing skin, you largely look and act the same. 

You avenged yourself quite neatly, after the spate of murders that swept the meteor. And Terezi took care of Vriska, and Gamzee sequestered himself somewhere in the depths of the meteor. Justice has been served as well as it can be, for now. You were furious, then, but you aren’t angry any more. You aren’t a lot of things. 

Dying is the greatest catharsis you’ve felt in sweeps. You’re not sure how you feel about that. 

\---

There is the matter of the bodies.

When you first woke up, so hungry you couldn’t  _ think,  _ you fed wherever you could. Terezi and Sollux were both very accommodating of your new, all-consuming desire to drink their blood. But now you feel, well, a bit awkward, just...asking people if you can drink from them.

You’re not sure how the others would feel about it. Rose might be persuaded, but you have no idea if human blood would even work. Dave is nicer than you thought he might be, with how Karkat described him, but you don’t feel nearly close enough to him to consider it. Karkat seems terrified that you’ll ask him, making excuses to leave any time you yawn wide enough for your fangs to flash in full display. Terezi would probably be fine with letting you feed, but you don’t run into her most nights. 

But, fortunately and unfortunately, you have a whole host of dead bodies on this meteor, all with plenty of blood left to drink. You would have collected them yourself, in secret, but it seems that someone else was way ahead of you. 

So. You went and struck a deal with Gamzee. It involved a lot of hissing and growling and yelling. He wanted the bodies, you wanted the bodies. He wanted the heads, you acquiesced on that. He wanted the blood to paint with. You wanted it to eat and not go feral for the want of it. Gamzee drained and bottled the blood, and with a bit of haggling, you got enough bottles to tide you over for now. There was the implication that you would have to come barter again. You tried to ignore it. 

He wanted to kill you. You wanted to kill him. You both agreed to disagree. 

\---

It’s strange, sometimes, to look at your shelf and see the bottles of what used to be your friends. Food is food, and drinking has never made you uncomfortable, but. There used to be twelve of you, and now there’s not. 

Once, you try to talk to Karkat about it. He doesn’t want to hear it. You try not to hold it against him. He was the leader, and he’s always taken things more personally than most trolls would. Sometimes you catch his eyes drifting towards where the hole in your stomach used to be, or messaging you in the middle of the day, faux casual, even though he’s obviously woken up from a daymare. 

He still doesn’t want to talk about it, and Rose doesn’t  _ get it,  _ not the way a troll would. So you leave random supplies in front of vents and get bottles of blood in exchange, and you try not to look down at the colors while you drink from them. 

\---

You and Karkat both predicted a...complicated series of relationships to form. The six of you  _ are  _ trapped together on this meteor for a sweep and a half, and world-ending game or not, are all, well. Dumb “teenagers,” as the humans would call it. You make a betting pool with Karkat and Terezi, but it quickly disbands when Terezi vows to cheat and make a move on Dave when she’ll win the most boonbucks. 

For a few perigees, it seems like Dave and Terezi  _ do  _ fall into some sort of red relationship. It doesn’t shock you. Nor does it shock Karkat, even though you think he acts a bit like a wiggler about it. But then the matespritship is over, just as quickly as it started, and all you can piece together as to  _ why  _ is from  Dave’s scattered ramblings to the coffee maker. And those are incoherent enough on a  _ good  _ day. 

Another relationship development is Terezi and Gamzee. Admittedly, you didn’t see it coming. Dave’s mutterings about a “honking grease painted motherfucker” only start to make sense after hearing about the new pitch pair. You knew humans didn’t have quadrants, and Dave always seemed more wary of them than Rose, but it still seems like an odd situation. Both that Dave would presumably break it off just because of that, and that Terezi would even entertain the idea of something like  _ that  _ with Gamzee in the first place. 

Before...everything, Terezi seemed to quite like Gamzee. You would have understood platonic hate after the things he did--and especially since Terezi was much closer to Nepeta than you ever were. But this is...Well. You suppose you can’t be  _ too  _ shocked. Terezi’s taste in quadrantmates has always been...dangerous. 

The two of them badly need an auspistice. You can’t be that for them--you hate Gamzee too much, in far too platonic of a way, to ever do it. You do not want that troll in your quadrants, no matter how dire the circumstances. Preferably, you’ll just kill him if he goes too far. Rose tries in your place, but you’re not sure if she succeeds as much as she thinks she does. You’d rather not crush her satisfaction. 

Karkat’s too close to the situation in pretty much every way imaginable to auspistize them effectively. And...you would trust Dave for  _ some  _ things, but this is not one of them. And besides, Gamzee seems to have some kind of grudge against him. You’re not sure if Dave has noticed, and you imagine he’ll sleep better at night not knowing. 

So you let it slide, as much as your stomach twists in knots watching Terezi slouch down towards the vents. 

\---

**\-- grimAuxiliatrix** **[GA] ** **started trolling tentacleTherapist** **[TT] ** **\--**

**GA: Hello**

**GA: Well It Doesnt Look Like Youre Online**

**GA: And Im Sorry To Be Messaging You In The Middle Of The Morning Like This**

**GA: But**

**GA: Do You Ever Feel**

**GA: I Dont Know**

**GA: Um**

**GA: Dead**

**GA: Wow That Was A Little Blunt**

**GA: And I Guess I Quite Literally Am In The Physical Sense**

**GA: Ha Ha**

**GA: But In The Less Literal Sense Too I Suppose**

**GA: Especially In Respect To My Purpose Here**

**GA: I Told You About The Matriorb Right**

**GA: That Was**

**GA: That Was Quite Literally What I Was Hatched For**

**GA: I Had The Same Access To Prospits Visions That Your Friend Did**

**GA: So I Knew That Was What I Had To Do Ever Since I Was A Wiggler**

**GA: My Lusus And I Were Always In Agreement**

**GA: And I Dont Want To Be Pessimistic**

**GA: But Perhaps**

**GA: This Could Be A Doomed Timeline**

**GA: ...**

**GA: Its Selfish**

**GA: But The Alternative Is That My Failure And The Extinction Of My Race Are Predestined Outcomes**

**GA: Timelines Are Far Removed From My Specialty**

**GA: But I Think That I Could Handle It**

**GA: If I Could Just Know That Another Me Out There Successfully Restored Our Race**

**GA: Otherwise**

**GA: There Is Very Little I Have Left To Offer**

**GA: I Can Glow And Run Really Fast**

**GA: That Will Not Bring Back The Hope Of Our Species**

**GA: But Oh Dear Ive Been Rambling On Quite A Bit Havent I**

**GA: And I See Youre Online Now**

**GA: You Dont Have To Read Any Of This Unless You Want To**

**GA: It Doesnt Even Make That Much Sense Admittedly**

**TT: hahha**

**GA: ?**

**TT: yours so gerenn**

**TT: Gren**

**TT: GREEN**

**GA: And You Are So Drunk**

**TT: Can I stell you as secret**

**GA: You Could**

**TT: (I’m a little drink**

**TT: *unk**

**TT: drunk)**

**TT: heehe**

**GA: I Am So Glad That You Told Me**

**GA: I Never Wouldve Known Otherwise**

**TT: I livee to serve :))**

**GA: Well If That Is The Case**

**GA: Then Go To Bed And Sleep It Off**

**GA: On Your Side In Case You Throw Up**

**GA: We Will Talk About This In The Evening**

**TT: we cant do that!!**

**GA: Why Not**

**TT: Youll be maaaad :(((**

**GA: I Wouldnt Worry About That**

**GA: I Havent Gotten Truly Angry In A Long Time**

**\-- grimAuxiliatrix** **[GA] ** **ceased trolling tentacleTherapist** **[TT] ** **\--**

**\---**

Rose messages you later in the evening to say that she’s alive, just has one hell of a human hangover. You say that you’re glad. She asks if you want to talk about the messages you sent before she came online. You say they were nothing. 

You wait for her to pry, regardless. But she lets it go instead, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved. 

\---

You see Terezi the next morning. And by see, you mean you would’ve tripped over her in the hallway if your perpetual glow hadn’t revealed her in time. You open your mouth to apologize, and then the words die on your tongue.

Her glasses are gone. There’s purple blood smeared all over her face, smears of cerulean on her hands and arms. And, most concerningly, fresh, teal blood oozing from her side. She has one arm loosely curled around the wound. The rainbow drinker instincts in you tell you to cull her while she’s weak and lap up all that delicious blood. You politely tell those instincts to shut the fuck up. 

You squat down to be eye level with her. She doesn’t turn her head, but you see her nostrils flare. This close, the sight and smell of all the blood makes your fangs ache. 

“What happened?” You honestly aren’t sure if she’ll answer you, but it’s worth a shot.

“I bit him. And he bit me.” You don’t need to ask which  _ he  _ she’s referring to. Her voice is flatter than usual. If she’s bothered about losing her illusion of enthusiasm, she doesn’t show it. Mostly, she just looks empty. You can certainly empa--No. This is about Terezi. 

“He’s a highblood,” you say, carefully. “I’m sure he could take whatever you gave him. But...you’re a midblood. It looks like he went too far.” Terezi shifts, grunting as she jostles her wound. Squinting, you can see where the blood oozes out onto her arm, line it up in your head with the spread of Gamzee’s fangs. 

“This--” Terezi squeezes her arm tighter over her side, teal blood spreading up her shirt, “This wasn’t where he went too far.” Your eyebrows shoot up almost off your face. You wait for her to elaborate, but she just sits there in silence. Your ashen instincts are going into overdrive. But you can’t. Not with Gamzee. 

“I really do hate him,” Terezi says after a few awkward minutes. “He’s shit.”

“I agree,” you say. “But for vastly different reasons than yours, I’m sure.” Terezi’s mouth twitches into an almost-smile. You count it as a victory, even if you probably haven’t earned one. 

“Do you want me to take you back to your room?” You ask when she doesn’t say anything else. Terezi just shakes her head.

“Nah, I’m good here.” She’s not bleeding out, you can tell that much. But she’s hurt, and clearly upset, and. And it isn’t your business, is it. If you can’t-- _ won’t  _ be the auspistice for them that they need, then what right do you have to meddle?

Vriska’s voice rises in your head, unbidden. It was back when they were wigglers, when she and Eridan had their first serious fight after becoming kismeses. You wanted to be a good moirail for her, so you tried to talk to her about it. Except-- _ Either vacill8te properly, Maryam,  _ she’d said,  _ or stay the HELL out of our business.  _

You stand up, wipe your hands on your skirt, and walk away. You do your best not to hate yourself for it. 

\---

You are chainsawing a broken machine in half. 

Or, you’re pretty sure it was broken before you got your chainsaw into it. It’s certainly broken  _ now,  _ at any rate, on account of the fact that it is laying on the floor in several pieces. It was just some dumb computer, anyway, and don’t you all have more of those than you know what to do with? It’s really not a big deal. 

This is more unhinged than you usually allow yourself to get. That’s why you don’t tell anyone about it, as you wipe the sweat off your face and head back to the more frequented chunk of the meteor. They might get the wrong idea, is all. 

\---

You’ve been on the meteor for what the humans have been insisting is “two years,” and you can’t stop thinking about dying. Not--not in the  _ doing it  _ kind of way, and boy has that ship sailed for you already, but. Where does an undead even go, when their body stops moving, when their un-life has been stripped away?

There’s a feeling, deep inside you, that something is wrong. It hasn’t gone away in so long--not since you looked up in the clouds above you and saw Alternia burning, not since you couldn’t convince Karkat to wait and find that one last damned frog, not since the matriorb was shot to pieces, not since--

It might be you, you think. This might just be the kind of troll that you are. Always worried, always fussing. Rose is scared about the future too. You can tell. But she copes, albeit poorly. And outside of the times she’s sobbing in your arms, wasted on human soporifics, she compartmentalizes well enough. 

You think you do the opposite of compartmentalizing. You feel everything, all the time. But you spread the feelings out into little pieces that you bump into throughout the day, then leave behind you when you don’t want to think about them any more. 

It used to be funny, that Rose didn’t notice you doing it. You can recognize after all this time how her psychoanalysis of others is usually just a tool for her--a way to deflect, to gain the imaginary upper hand, to process her own feelings, or whatever else she feels like she has to do. You know it means that she really respects and trusts you, for her to want you to tell her things only because  _ you  _ want to.

Maybe she’s just afraid to ask, to  _ really  _ ask about your--your whatever. Maybe she thinks she understands well enough already. Or maybe, maybe even a Seer of Light hasn’t noticed at all. 

You sit next to her in the common room as she practices her Alternian reading from a book. Her arm is pressed up against yours, warm even through the ridiculous sweater Dave alchemized for her. You’ve zoned out too many times to really keep track of where in the story she’s at, but you still try to smile encouragingly in all the right parts. 

It’s as nice a night as any. You’re having a good time. Rose says something funny and you laugh, feeling as empty as anything.

\---

You can’t remember the last time you cried. Sometimes you wonder if rainbow drinkers even can.

\---

Time passes too slow and recklessly fast. Suddenly the end of the journey stops being a vague, oft-referred to event, and becomes a matter of a perigee, then a week, then just a few more nights before it ends. 

It’s been quiet, on the meteor. It’s probably been almost a perigee since you’ve seen Terezi. You know she’s alive by how smug Gamzee sounds when you restock on blood one last time. Karkat and Dave are usually regular fixtures in the common room, but you haven’t seen much of them either. From Rose’s sporadic Can Town updates, you can only assume they’re doing wiggler things with the carapacian. Whatever they need to stave off the dread, you suppose. 

Rose spends a lot of her nights trying to force visions until it gives her migraines. She lays face down on your pile, a cold washcloth pressed into her forehead, while you sit in the corner, reading by only the soft glow of your hands on the page. 

It’s not the date you were hoping for. But you get it. If you could see the future, you would probably be doing the same thing right now. Selfishly, so fucking selfishly, this is still better than when she’s drunk. You’re ashamed, that you would rather see your matesprit in pain than out of her head, but still happy enough. 

You tried her human soporific once, at her encouragement. It didn’t do much for you, which was fine. Rose didn’t even have that much herself, that night, getting wrapped up in the implications of chemicals working differently in each of your species. She’d eagerly asked you if there were troll soporifics, and what those were made out of. 

You’d had to put a hand on her shoulder, to stop her from trying to alchemize sopor slime. All of you had tried, throughout the game and after it. The daymares were vicious, after Prospit was destroyed. It couldn’t be captchalogued, and then Gamzee had finished off the little you all had left. It’s been over three human years since you last slept in sopor. But it's impossible to make. A banned item, for some ridiculous reason, you're sure. 

You miss, suddenly, with a fierceness that aches, curling up into your recuperacoon with your lusus nearby. You can recognize, with well over a sweep of distance, that Alternia was a bitter and cruel place. You were the only jadeblood your age that you knew of, and come adulthood, your friends would have been sent off into space, and you would have gone down into the caverns for the rest of your lifespan. 

It used to be a solace, knowing that you were destined by the clouds for more than that. But now, looking back at the twisted ruin of all your failures, you’re not sure if it was a good thing, this game. 

The game kept you from dying (sort of) along with the rest of your species, you remind yourself. Several of your dear friends were kept alive by it too. Or half-alive, in the case of Sollux. You and Aradia were never close, but her second chance at true  _ life  _ was a blessing impossible outside of the game. Karkat’s luck would’ve run out eventually, and his mutation would have gotten him killed. Alternia would’ve chewed all of you up and spit you back out. 

And you--you got to meet Rose in all of this. You got to  _ make her universe.  _ She never would have existed at all if the twelve of you hadn’t played. Matesprit is what you call her in your head, and you wonder if she calls you “girlfriend” in hers, but whatever it is the two of you have is something...nice. Special. 

But even with all of your logic, those objectively true facts...you still see the matriorb exploding, still see the white blast of light and feel the sudden  _ tear  _ somewhere in your chest. You remember thinking  _ at least I tried.  _ Dying for the sake of  _ something,  _ even if it was futile, is still better than living for nothing except the sake of it, you think. 

Your eyes start to sting. You keep reading. 

\---

Rose and Karkat both message you at the same time, deep in their own crises. You think they’d find the coincidence funny, if they weren’t both so scared. Karkat at least doesn’t bother to hide it, just tells you that he’s so  _ sure  _ he’s going to be dead by the end of the week. Rose tries to act excited, but it’s a weak front. She’s terrified, but at least she’s sober. 

You bounce back between the two chat windows, saying what you think they both need to hear to soothe them. It takes almost an hour to wind them both back down.

They both ask if you have any of your own feelings about the final fight. If you tell them the truth, they’ll both work themselves up into a frenzy again. So you say that of course you don’t, you’ll just fight and win and that will be the end of that. When neither of them push you on it, you snap your laptop shut with a decisive  _ click,  _ and go lay down in your pile. 

Sometimes it feels like you give pieces of yourself away, and you never get them back again.

\---

You steel yourself. You stare at yourself in the mirror for a long time, watching the steady pulse of light coming from your skin and the minute changes in the expression of your eyes. The meteor is about to land, and you’re going to talk to Rose about your--your feelings, you guess. If anyone can help you sort through the cluttered mess of them, it’s her. Better now than later, because there’s the looming risk that “later” might never come. 

You check her usual haunts, her room, the common area, the lab she goes to when she doesn’t want you to find her. The place where the two of you had your first kiss. 

She’s in Can Town when you find her, and she’s drunk.

Something inside of you withers and goes away. You get her to her feet, and help her up to the roof, where all of you meet to face the end of everything together.

\---

The meteor closes in on the new session. A lot of things happen at once. 

It’s--it’s chaos. Rose is hanging off your shoulder, drunk, and Jade is there and crackling with green energy. Karkat dies, and then he’s dragged back to life, and you’re sprinting through a burning forest, smoke in your lungs, and, blessedly, there’s no room in your pan to think about anything at all. 

There’s just running, and then  _ rage,  _ as you see what Gamzee is doing to Terezi. The vibrations of your chainsaw’s motor shaking run up your hands, the pounding of your feet on the concrete running up your legs. Your fangs are bared so wide your jaw aches.

Karkat is faster than you, by just enough that Gamzee has time to snatch him with that highblood speed, run him through and throw him down into the lava like he’s  _ nothing.  _ Your chainsaw slits Gamzee neatly, bottom to top. Cool, purple blood splatters across your front as you stagger to a stop. 

You make eye contact with Terezi, in that final second. It’s confusing, to see a look like  _ that  _ on her face. You don’t know what to do. She’s bleeding so much. You haven’t even begun to grasp the scope of the loss. 

Something’s happening above you. You don’t even really get a chance to look--

\--and then everything goes into a great flash of Light----

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! I wish I had something more eloquent to say here but man I just really love Kanaya Maryam


End file.
